We did it! 5,753 miles for our maiden voyage.
Yes, we’re a little bit crazy, and this was NOT at all helpful for my anxiety, but we did it. We traveled from Northern Virginia to Lake Tahoe and back in less than three weeks. Apparently we go BIG when we jump in to something for the first time.
When it came time to leave, we had to leave some of the renovation work incomplete and just pack up and go. The floors were in without any trim to finish it off. Our bedroom walls were half painted and there was only primer on our door-less cabinets. It was functional and good enough for our haul across the country and back.
However, running low on time also meant we didn’t have time to have the tires checked out or for Nick to do much practice driving. He hitched up and drove downtown so we could load everything in the trailer. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the trailer backed into the driveway where we had it parked previously. So our first night in the RV was in our local Walmart parking lot.
One hour into our trip we had a tire on the trailer blow out. We replaced all four per the repairman’s advice – we’d been meaning to do that anyway, so we felt better about the rest of our trip now that we were safe with all new tires.
Until we got a flat on that same tire the next day! In the middle of nowhere Missouri. Diagnosis this time – bent axel. Axel repaired while in Missouri and thankfully, no major mishaps for the rest of the trip -other than water leaking in through the slide while we drove home in the rain. We left our trailer at Camping World to have that fixed as soon as we returned.
While this trip was SO. MUCH. DRIVING, (We’re talking mostly 10 and 12 hour days) it got us excited for our upcoming life full time on the road. In the future we don’t plan to drive more than 5-6 hours in a day and rarely would we drive two days in a row. But after those long days in the car, we slept in our own beds. Our clothes were right there ready for us. No packing up for a hotel, just putting things back in their proper places. At one point Mariah and I were alone in the RV while parked outside a friend’s house and she sweetly said, “It feels like home.” Yes. Yes it does. And it will feel even more like home when the renovation is finished and we settle in completely.
Check out the two videos of our trip:
